Earthquake Studio’s “Dub Harder Than Steel” was the work of TNT Roots and Winston Dread. This was the only info printed on the now sought after album’s home / hand made sleeve. Built on super limited, and largely Casio, kit, the grooves contained 10 minimal, moody, machined productions, where the low end was mixed as low as it could go without distorting. Slamming like slabs of industrial concrete. Raising, given the duo’s moniker, a suitably room-shaking grounation. Peppered with percussive, programmed military paradiddles and liberally rinsed with cavernous reverb and delay, its snares cracked like angry memories of slavedriver whips. Urban warrior changes whose melodies appeared in bleeps, chimes and Sci-Fi synths. Bearing bionic faux, brass blasts to beat and bruise Babylon. Fanfares to bring down its walls. 

“Downbeat From The Motherland” was a slow, crashing crawl. Churning, banging, planet smashing, with acidic edges and metallic insect chatter in its detail. “Most High Dub” was another similarly monolithic chunk of mutant modern roots. It’s thud like a prizefighter relentlessly punching, pounding the heavy bag. Serenaded by eerie, ominous sort of theremin tones. Andrew Weatherall played the second of these tracks during his late night residency on Kiss FM. London’s then leading pirate radio station. Sending me, a long-haired, emaciated Ecstasy twizzle stick, out searching for a copy. Something I found in Soho, on Berwick Street, in the racks of Keith Stone’s shop Daddy Kool. The vinyl emitting its very own brand / breed of sparse, spectral haunted dancehall. 

For those never lucky enough to wander into Daddy Kool in the early 1990s, Real Rock Records are reissuing Earthquake Studio’s dynamite Dub Harder Than Steel.